


bury a friend

by orphan_account



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Horror, M/M, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-26 00:31:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20733296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Songfic (bury a friend by Billie Eilish)Peter's haunted by nightmares he can't escape.When he's asleep, he's tormented by Loki and an evil Tony, until he is unable to tell the living world from the sleeping one.





	bury a friend

“**What do you want from me**?” Peter begs Tony, but that’s not the question he’s really asking. What he’s asking is, **why don't you run from me?**

“**What are you wondering?**” Tony murmurs, wrapping his arms around Peter. He presses a kiss to his forehead and in the brand of his lips Peter thinks, **what do you know?**

“**Why aren't you scared of me? Why do you care for me?”**

“I love you,” Tony says, tugging Peter down with him to their bed and letting him curl into his steady embrace. “I could never be scared of you.”  
Peter blinks back tears and buries his head in Tony’s chest. “I love you,” he whispers back. Tony tugs the duvet over both of them, and Peter stares at the smooth white ceiling. Of all the questions they have, all the questions they don’t dare ask, one haunts him.  
**When we all fall asleep, where do we go?**

**“Come here,**” Tony says. Peter settles onto his lap and a muscled arm holds him in place. He tips his head back to Tony’s shoulder, letting the conversation Tony’s having with Steve wash over him, ignoring the words. He bites down on his tongue to stop himself begging Tony to leave with him, leave it all behind. That is the one thing he wants, and the one thing Tony will never be able to give.

“**Say it, spit it out. What is it exactly?”** Tony demands, stiffening a little under him. Peter looks forwards to where Steve has clenched his hands together.

“You’re paying for all our new gear,” Steve says. “We’re living in your tower, free of charge.”  
Tony looks more than a little confused. Peter pities Steve, because he knows what he’s thinking. **You're paying? Is the amount cleaning you out? Am I satisfactory?**  
He has no interest in the internal affairs of the Avengers. He slips off Tony’s lap and walks into their bedroom, flopping down on their bed and activating his own AI. There’s code to be written, upgrades to be made, but he doesn’t feel like it. There’s a sort of all-enveloping dullness within his mind. Even the idea of swinging across the city seems boring.  
He sighs, rising from the bed and stalking across to the balcony. There’s a glass floor below his bare feet, and Peter wonders what would happen should he shatter the floor and go plummeting down. He doubts even his super-strength and healing ability could save him. **Today, I'm thinking about the things that are deadly**, he decides.  
He hears Tony behind him and twists in his arms to kiss him before he can talk. He doesn’t feel like talking. The way I'm drinking you down, he thinks. Absorbing all his love **like I wanna drown, like I wanna end me.**

**Step on the glass,** Peter tells himself. **Staple your tongue. Bury a friend** and then he decides, **try to wake up**.  
It’s only when he hits the tarmac hard enough to cause the reverberations to shatter his ankles that he realises this is no dream.  
**Cannibal class, killing the son,** chants in his sleep that night. **Bury a friend**, his mind begs. Bury Tony, bury him so far under the ground in a steel coffin, unbreakable so that he feels all the pressure pushing down on him. So impossible to lift or escape. **I wanna end me**, he sobs into his mind.

**“I wanna end me,**” Peter whispers over and over again, rocking in the bed that Tony left for a late-night conference call. **I wanna, I wanna, I wanna end me.**  
** I wanna, I wanna, I wanna...**

“**What do you want from me**?” he begs again, and Tony looks at him with so much sadness and so much confusion he can’t bear it. Why, he almost screams, **why don't you run from me?** Can’t you hear how wrong I am? I’m not right, I’m fucked up and twisted and** what are you wondering?**

“**What do you know?”** Tony asks him gently. “About depression?”  
Peter’s teeth grit and he wonders, **why aren't you scared of me?**

“**Why do you care for me**?” bursts out and Tony just shakes his head. He looks so sad for Peter and he hates it, hates it, and Peter doesn’t know whether this is real or not. Is he in a dream right now? What happens in his dreams anyway? Why is he so scared of sleep?** When we all fall asleep, where do we go?**

**“Listen,”** Loki whispers. Peter is asleep, he must be, because Loki is kneeling by his bedside. He twists over to see Tony, still sleeping peacefully.  
“**Keep you in the dark**,” Loki says, and starts laughing. It’s dark and bitter and twisted, and as he laughs maggots crawl writhing out his mouth and fall on Peter’s lap, glowing through their pale squishy bodies a pure Tesseract blue.  
“**What had you expected? Me to make you my art and make you a star?**”  
Peter turns again and sees Tony wide awake and sitting up. He’s smiling. “**Get you connected**? Joke’s on you, Spider-boy. You’re just a cute piece of ass. I can drop you whenever I get bored."

“**I'll meet you in the park,**” Peter tells him. It’s their keyword, the place of their first date and their safeword. **I'll be calm and collected,** he tells himself. He has to be. This can’t be real, it can’t be-

“**But we knew right from the start that you'd fall apart**,” Loki says from the other side of the bed. The maggots are squirming back into his mouth and slipping down his throat.

“Why?”

**“Cause I'm too expensive,**” Tony says. “You never could afford me. Not with your money, not with your love.”

**It's probably something that shouldn't be said out loud**. Peter knows that. His and Tony’s relationship may be unbalanced, unsteady, unfairly weighted on his end of the equation with expectation that Tony will never be able to meet. After all, this is just a fling for Tony. Nothing serious. “**Honestly, I thought that I would be dead by now**,” he mutters. “**It would save calling security, keeping my head held down.”**  
Tony is on the other side of the wall. They’ve had another argument, their biggest to date, and Peter’s pretty sure it’s Tony’s fault. But he has a choice, of sorts. **Bury the hatchet or bury a friend right now.**  
He opens the door, and the relief on Tony’s face knocks him sideways.

**The debt I owe**, the debt I owe to Tony, Peter thinks. **Gotta sell my soul** to be worthy **cause I can't say no. No, I can't say no** to what he wants. So he says yes and lets Tony tie up his wrists to the bedposts, hiding his fear. **Then his limbs are frozen, his eyes won't close**, and he wishes he could forget everything.  
And I can't say no, I can't say no, echoes in his head.

**“Careful,**” Loki says. Loki always wants Tony to be careful. Leave no marks that can’t be healed by morning.  
“**Step on the glass**,” Tony orders, and Peter does. Every tiny shard digs into his feet and he almost sobs from the pain each step brings.** “Staple your tongue**,” and he has to. The metal makes a horrible squishing noise as it crunches through his tongue. “**Bury a friend,”**, handing him a shovel, and Peter looks down on Ned’s dead face, shovelling soil onto him. Try to wake up, he tells himself, but he can’t. The same old nonsense in his ears. **Cannibal class, killing the son**.** Bury a friend, I wanna end me...**

**“I wanna end me,**” he screams from the roof. No Spider-suit. What’s the point?** “I wanna, I wanna, I wanna end me.”**  
** I wanna, I wanna, I wanna...**

**“What do you want from me?**” he shouts at Tony. There’s fear in his lover’s eyes, and Peter feels a nasty little twist of pleasure at realising it’s similar to the one he feels every night. **“Why don't you run from me?** I could do anything to you.”  
Tony backs away one step at a time. **What are you wondering? What do you know?** Peter wants to scream and scream and scream until his lungs give out.  
**Why aren't you scared of me? Why do you care for me?**  
** When we all fall asleep, where do we go?**


End file.
